Z77 Motherboard Round-Up: MSI, ASUS, Gigabyte, Intel

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Total System Power Consumption

Before bringing this article to a close, we'd also like to take a but about power consumption. Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored how much power each of our Z77 Express-based test system was consuming with a power meter, and compared them to the reference systems used throughout our benchmark tests.

Total System Power Consumption

Tested at the Outlet

Our goal was to give you an idea as to how much power each configuration used while idling at the Windows desktop and while under a heavy CPU workload. Keep in mind, this is total system power consumption being measured at the outlet and not the the individual power cnsumption of the motherboards alone.

The power consumption characteristics of each of the Z77 Express-based motherbaords we tested were quite different. The MSI Z77A-GD65 proved to consume the least amount of power of the bunch, under both idle and load conditions. Next came the Asus board, followed by Gigabyte's offering. Intel's DZ77A-70K consumed more power than all three, however. We've reached out to Intel in hopes of finding a clear answer as to why their board would consume more power than partner boards that have more intergrated peripherals (it's likely due to slight voltage differences), but haven't heard back just yet.